A new study finds that humans can track a scent trail across a field with all their other senses blocked. By studying blindfolded college students who crawled through grass to sniff out a chocolate-scented trail, scientists say they've found evidence of a human smelling ability that experts thought was impossible.
The study indicates the human brain compares information it gets from each nostril to get clues about where a smell is coming from. And it suggests dogs, mice and other mammals do the same thing, contrary to what most scientists have thought.
People compare signals from each ear to locate the source of a noise. But the prevailing notion has been that mammals can't follow the same strategy for smells, because their nostrils are too close together to get distinct signals. "We debunked that," said Noam Sobel of the University of California, Berkeley, who reported the new results.
Link & Image: Discovery News
Tags: Smell | Senses
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